


Prompt 6: Photographs

by LadyArinn



Series: Februrary 2020 Daily Prompts [5]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bad Friend Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), End of the World, M/M, Missing Persons, Reliving Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:14:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22600819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyArinn/pseuds/LadyArinn
Summary: Stiles is on a mission, one he's tried and failed before. But this time, he'll make sure he succeeds.
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Februrary 2020 Daily Prompts [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1621495
Comments: 29
Kudos: 303





	Prompt 6: Photographs

**Author's Note:**

> If you look at the series you'll see that there is no prompt 5. This is because 1) quotes as prompts are stupid and 2) I wrote something and hated it, probably because I hated the prompt. I did succeed in writing a story, but for the first time in my life I will not post something I completed because I truly despise it. 
> 
> But have this thing I like!

Stiles wakes up as he had a hundred times before, eyes blinking slowly to bring the ceiling of his childhood bedroom into focus, and sighs heavily.

He forces himself up and gets ready quietly, silent as his father calls a goodbye up to him as the man leaves. Every movement he makes is absent minded, one eye on the window, obviously deep in thought as he gets dressed and expertly moves around the mess cluttering his room.

There is a backpack at the foot of his bed, red and sturdy, a little bit old and a little bit worn, and he stands over it in a moment of contemplation before angrily kicking it once, though not hard enough to sent it flying or anything dramatic like that. Just something small, but big enough to make him feel like his point had been made. With that done he stoops over to pick the bag up, hitching the strap over his shoulder like he had done countless times before.

He almost runs to his jeep once he closes the front door behind him, not bothering with the lock. His hand is almost reverent as he trails it along the hood as he walks around, his smile a small, melancholy thing as he gets in the driver's seat.

He knows he has plans with the pack, they’re supposed to meet to discuss how things will work with them going off to college. Who will stay in Beacon Hills, who will be responsible if a supernatural need comes up, who will go away but promise to stay in touch no matter what. But instead of turning toward the diner they were meant to meet at he turns his Jeep in the opposite direction, driving straight to the preserve. 

The path to the Nemeton is hidden, and Stiles knows this. So he allows himself to be lost for hours in the woods, wandering through whispering trees until he is allowed to reach the trunk of the beastly tree.

“Alright,” He sighs, pulling the bag around to reach into one of it’s many pockets, “You and me, lets do this.”

* * *

Scott hunts him down in his backyard after weeks of them not seeing each other or speaking and finds him working on a new little garden in his backyard, little sprouts coming up through the soil determinedly. 

“Stiles! What’s wrong? You haven’t talked to me in like a week, man.”

“Two weeks, Scott.” Stiles says simply, watering his plants with a small purple watering can he handled gently. “I haven’t talked to you in two weeks.”

“Um, yeah? Okay? That’s kind of the problem, you know. Why?”

Stiles shoves himself to his feet to face the boy, grabbing the backpack that had sat at his side as he did.

“Scott, I know you don’t trust me-” He started seriously,

“What? Of course I trust you!” The boy protested, big eyes going wide with his shock and disbelief.

Stiles didn’t pause his statement at all to allow for the outburst, “Because you don’t, not really. So I’m not going bother to talk to you about what is going on. Just know that I am doing what I need to, and also that I quit the pack. So, you know… Have a good life. Bye.” He brushed the dirt off his hands and skirted past his friend.

_“What?!”_ Scott shouted, eyes flashing as a clawed and lashed out without thought to grab for the other man’s arm, though somehow Stiles managed to slip right out of his grasp by stepping to the side at the right moment.

“I don’t have the time, Scott!” Stiles called over as he hurried to the house, “There’s more important things going on than dealing with gnome infestations or your romantic woes.” He stopped at the door, turning with his hand on the handle to look back at the baffled boy. “You’ll be alright, you know. You don’t even notice I’m gone, really.”

“Are you friendship _breaking up with me?”_ He cried, looking absolutely devastated. “We’ve been friends since we were four!”

“That was a very long time ago.” Stiles said quietly, semi hidden in the shadows of the house so that Scott couldn’t quite see his face right from where he was standing in the harsh sunlight. “And Scott, you know how we haven’t seen each other in two weeks?”

“Yeah?” The other boy’s voice is a little shaky, but there’s something about the way Stiles is talking and standing that has every instinct in his body telling him to stay very, very still.

“Are you sure it was just two weeks?”

Stiles has walked back inside, screen door whining shut behind him, before Scott is able to move from where he’d been shocked still.

* * *

One day, just before the end of summer, Sheriff Stilinski comes home to an empty house and doesn’t think much of it until two days later when he realises he hasn’t seen his son in a while. He texts and calls, but there is no answer. He searches the boy’s room, but there isn’t anything notable missing, though it is oddly clean and put together. Scott and his other friends haven’t spoke to him since June, no one knows where he’s been going each day, and no one knows if thats even where he’s gone to this time.

His instincts tell him something is really wrong but he doesn’t quite understand until he realises that the fridge and freezer are stuffed full of tupperware labeled with dates, enough healthy lunches and dinners portioned out to last him months. Every bottle of alcohol had been poured empty, though put back in its proper place so he doesn’t notice until he finally breaks down and reaches for a drink, and a package gets delivered after a few days that has Stiles’ phone, memory wiped clean other than the dozens of calls and texts that people had recently sent, unread, begging him to tell them what was going on.

The only things he can figure out are missing are the backpack the man had seen his son running around with for the past few months, and his Jeep. But they find the car after a couple of weeks, and find that it had been fully paid off and given to a young single mother of two who had been struggling to get back and forth from her home and her two jobs after her own car broke down.

She tells him that Stiles had come like an angel just when she’d been sure it was the end of everything she had worked so hard to maintain for so long. He said he’d heard of her struggles from a friend and wanted to give her his car, free, so long as she promised to take good care of it.

_What friend?_ The sheriff wants to ask, _Where did he get the money to do this?_

“What did he really ask for in return?”

The woman stops crying her happy tears with a too-big sniff, wiping at where her makeup had run. 

“A favor.” She said quietly, focusing intently on twisting the tissue in her hands. “He said he’d need someone with my experience in a few years, so he asked for a favor.”

“And what exactly _do_ you do?” He asks, suspicious. She looks up at him with wide, confused eyes and shrugs.

“I’m a waitress during the day and a janitor at night. Why I said yes. I was sure he wouldn’t be able to ask me for anything too bad, if it was related to me working.”

* * *

It takes four years.

* * *

Peter opens his door feeling no shortage of surprise, but being careful not to show it.

“Stiles,” He purrs, giving the man a cursory once over, being careful to categorize every facet he could. “How lovely to see you after all this time.”

The boy—a man now, actually—looked better and worse than Peter would have imagined the missing man would be. Hair a little longer, messy in a way that looked like it could equally be deliberate or negligent, though it didn’t look bad in any way. Clothes a better fit, just a simple t-shirt, open jacket, and dark denim jeans that showed off the long, lean, wiry lines of his body, only interrupted by the strap of a red backpack. 

He was missing a part of his earlobe and his entire left ring finger, both old wounds. There was also a scar bisecting his eyebrow that trailed down to his cheek, eyelid drooping slightly on that eye from the weight of the puckered skin, and four that trailed down the long column of his throat in a way that invited thoughts Peter thought best to shove aside for the moment.

He knew claw marks when he saw them, though they weren’t quite right to be from a werewolf. Still, it was strangely… Intriguing.

“Peter.” The young man nodded, “I need your help.”

“Oh?” Peter hummed, allowing the man to step into his apartment because this was just so _interesting_. There hadn’t been anything this good since Scott had tried to negotiate with the gnomes infesting the town a couple of years ago. “Do tell.” 

Stiles walks right through the hallway and around the corner, bypassing the living room to instead march up to the dining table and carefully set his bag on the top. He stops for a moment to stare intently at the painting Peter had just purchased and hung the day before, a cacophonous explosion of colors and lines that he’d hoped would liven up the space a bit. It had been so dreadfully dull recently, and it had been a bit of an impulse purchase.

“Huh.” The younger man hums, and Peter can’t quite categorize the look on his face. “That’s new.”

“It is.” Peter agrees, peeking over just to make sure there wasn’t a sale tag or anything still on it that he may have missed. 

“Huh.” Then he seems to shake himself out of his stupor and sit down in the middle of the table. Peter, deciding to see where this goes, takes a seat at the opposite side of the table. 

Stiles opens the main pocket of his bag quickly, reaching inside and pulling out a stack of photos. Photos he starts to place on the wood of the table between them, turning each so that they were positioned correctly for Peter to look at.

And look he did.

Each one was a photo of him or of him and Stiles together. 

“I’ve lived this life over and over at least a couple dozen times” Stiles says quietly, still placing photos. “I… I started to lose count, if i’m honest. But you and me? In almost every single one we’ve been partners. You’re the one I’ve always come to because you’re the only one that can help, really.” He clears his throat and starts tapping pictures. “This is us in Bali my third go around, we took a lot of vacations that one. This one we’re in Wales, on our… Fifth time, I think? This one is Boston on the thirteenth. That was the longest we went.” Stiles murmured, the last one he tapped showing a much older Peter with his arm around Stiles’ waist, grey threading trough Peter’s hair liberally and his beard pretty much fully silver.

“Well-” Peter started, pithy comments about to joyfully leap from his tongue because while he may have been in a coma for six years he did know about photoshop—though it was nice that Stiles had aged him so gracefully. A bit flattering.

But Stiles just tilted his head slightly and looked at him with eyes that were so weary, but still somehow a little amused at watching Peter gear himself up to begin his scathing retort.

“Your favorite flavor of ice cream is pistachio, and you like watching the Muppet movies even though you pretend you don’t. You used to want to work in a museum but being a lawyer was more useful to the pack, and your favorite family member was never Derek, though you’ll lie and say he was. It was Mathias, your other sister’s son, because you thought he was the funniest. You don’t like being called baby for a pet name, you hate having your hair cut because the people touching you makes you uncomfortable, and your left testicle is noticeably bigger than the right.” 

“It is not!” Peter protested, surprised at how off guard the last one caught him.

“Trust me, I’ve spent way more time looking at your balls than you have.” He says, watching Peter carefully with every word that was uttered. “And finally, you have this.” A sealed envelope is pulled out of the bag and passed to him, and Peter can identify his own handwriting anywhere.

He wasn’t certain what magic Stiles was using, or where he had found a telepath in this day and age, but he knew better to believe anything the younger man was saying. But he was curious so he opened the envelope and read the short letter held inside.

He put it down carefully.

“What do we need to do?”

Stiles swept everything back into his backpack and zipped it firmly closed, looking up to determinedly meet Peter’s eyes.

“We finally save the goddamned world.”


End file.
